[Biozhang]

I guess just talking it out helps sometimes. After discovering that it all had to do with showing the images with transparency I went digging at all the possible options that might effect that.

(Insert big smack on the head here) Checked out the color depth settings and they were set at 8bits instead of 16. Set it to 16bits – voila, problem solved.

Sorry to have taken up anyone’s valuable thoughts on something like this. Sometimes you just can’t see the forest for the trees.

Thanks for you help!

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

I must have not been looking at something right while exporting the TIFF and GIF images. Both of those formats work fine if the alpha channel is not preserved. But if you preserve the alpha and then bring it in, the same problem occurs.

So the only images that cause the problem are images with an alpha channel. If it doesn’t have an alpha channel, no problem.

Still perplexed.

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

Thank you, those are some good suggestions. Seems the most simple, but I didn’t even think of trying the different file formats. I use the PSDs so much. Here’s what I found out.

Formats that cause the problem:
PSDs
EPSs
PNGs

Formats that don’t cause the problem:
TIFFs (with transparency)
GIFs (with transparency)
and any format that does not support preserving transparency (i.e. JPEG)

So it probably has somethihng to do with displaying the transparency on those other formats, but I’m not sure what. Deleting my prefs did nothing to help, makes no difference if its a new project or comp, and neither did moving the layer around the timeline. And there are no hidden layers or adjustment layers.

Is there something I’m missing about “displaying transparency”, some setting or something?

Those are great suggestions, thanks again!

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

Yeah just to be sure I did that and there are no keyframes.

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

Yes it is very strange indeed. Yes the image is still dark when I stop scrubbing. I have figured out though its only with graphics, not footage (if that makes sense). When I import footage (AVIs, QTs,etc) no problems. However the minute I start to add graphics to a comp with footage, then starts the “progressive darkening” (sounds like a political novel).

I tried enabling/disabling the OpenGL preview preferences and nothing changed, good suggestion though.

So, as best I can tell right now, it only starts happening when there are graphics (anything other than footage which in my case would be PS files and layers) in the timeline.

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

Nope. Just took the flower layer brought it into the timeline, set a couple of keyframes and changed the values. No presets. Nothing else in the timeline.

In fact, I just recreated the problem with no animation whatsoever. Just the flower, no motion/effects/presets, nothing. Each time I touch the scrub bar it darkens everything until there’s nothing to look at. Very strange to me.

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

You don’t need expressions to do it. Its really pretty easy in AE.

1. Create a new comp the size and length you need (i.e. 5min)
2. Create a new solid, any color.
3. Go to Effects/Text/Numbers.
4. When the Numbers Properties Dialog Box comes up, choose your font and
alignment settings then click OK.
5. Then in the Numbers Effects Controls, under Format/Type choose
Timecode [30].
6. Then choose your color settings under Fill and Stroke.
7. Adjust the size if you need to.
8. Uncheck Proportional Spacing. This prevents the numbers from
bouncing around as they adjust to the different sizes of numbers.
9. Lastly, select your solid layer in the timeline and hit Ctrl + Alt +
R to reverse the layer and play the numbers backwards.
10. If you’d like you can Pre-Comp the whole thing and then mask off
the numbers you don’t need (i.e. hours and frames, unless you want
those).

Thats it. Pretty simple really. Hope this helps!

Good Luck!

BIOZHANG